Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
7 Synthesis and Recommendations
7 Synthesis and Recommendations
Pages 217-228
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 217... ...
. Through its review of the risk assessment, uncertainty analysis, and decision making at EPA and other public health entities, the committee found that, in general, more emphasis should be placed on the uncertainty in the factors that affect EPA's decisions besides estimates of human health.
|
From page 218... ...
Good communication among analysts, decision makers, and stakeholders is critical to ensuring a high-quality, comprehensive decision-making process and a high-quality, comprehensive decision. A process that includes such communication will help identify stakeholder concerns and potential uncertainties and to build social trust among the participants in the process.
|
From page 219... ...
Uncertainties About Cost–Benefit Analyses Given the highly uncertain estimates of both health benefits and costs, uncertainty analyses in cost–benefit analyses can inform decision makers about • how difficult it is to differentiate among different potential decisions; • the disagreement among experts about the way regulation affects the economy, even when using similar models; and • the ranges and sensitivity of estimates to different variables. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Uncertainties in the Characterization of Human Health Risks Finding 1 Decision documents (such as documents that the technical experts at EPA prepare to explain site-specific decisions)
|
From page 220... ...
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision documents and other communica tions to the public should systematically • include information on what uncertainties in the health risk assess ment are present and which need to be addressed, • discuss how the uncertainties affect the decision at hand, and • include an explicit statement that uncertainty is inherent in science, including the science that informs EPA decisions.
|
From page 221... ...
RECOMMENDATION 2 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should develop methods to systematically describe and account for uncertainties in decision relevant factors in addition to estimates of health risks -- including technological and economic factors -- into its decision-making process.
|
From page 222... ...
RECOMMENDATION 4 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
|
From page 223... ...
This could allow decision makers to systematically assess and better explain the role that public sentiment and other factors that are difficult to quantify play in the decision-making process. 1 Ecological risk assessment is a "process that evaluates the likelihood that adverse ecologi cal effects may occur or are occurring as a result of exposure to one or more stressors" (http:// www.epa.gov/raf/publications/pdfs/ECOTXTBX.PDF [accessed January 16, 2013]
|
From page 224... ...
Iterative and deliberative problem formulation and planning using a systematic framework for the decision-making process will help ensure that the nature and extent of uncertainty analysis to be included in risk characterizations is appropriate to the decision context, and that decision makers are provided a view of uncertainty that is of maximum value to the decision under consideration. Involvement of decision makers and stakeholders in the planning and scoping of uncertainty analyses during the initial, problem formulation phase of will help ensure that the goals of the uncertainty analysis are consistent with the needs of the decision makers, and will help define analytic endpoints, and identify population subgroups and heterogeneity, and other uncertainties.
|
From page 225... ...
The implications of each to policy making should be provided in other communication documents when it might be useful for readers. Finding 9 Given that decision makers vary in their technical backgrounds and experience with highly mathematical depictions of uncertainty, a variety of communication tools should be developed.
|
From page 226... ...
In summary, the committee was impressed by the technical advances in uncertainty analysis used by EPA scientists in support of EPA's human health risk assessments, which form the foundation of all EPA decisions. The committee believes that EPA can lead the development of uncertainty analyses in economics and technological assessment that are used for regulatory purposes, as well as how to characterize and account for public sentiment and political context.
|
From page 227... ...
1997. Risk assessment and risk management in regulatory decision-making.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.